Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2013

Floor Speech

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Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chairman, the budget challenge we face requires two things: first, it requires the confidence to invest in the future and rebuild the middle class; second, it requires the discipline to bring down our debt with a plan that recognizes what is obvious to all Americans, that any plan with any prospect of success must include spending cuts and revenues.

This budget, instead, makes things worse and delivers a body blow to the middle class. It doubles down on tax cuts, adding $150,000 in cuts to the wealthiest Americans. It increases Pentagon spending, fencing it off from it being required to make any contribution to reducing our debt. And that body blow to the middle class, it's delivered by cutting Pell Grants, kicking kids off of work study, by taking away things that the middle class needs, a functional Food and Drug Administration, FAA, cuts in national science. It is really bad for the middle class.

Americans know that a budget is much more than line items on a spreadsheet. It's about who we are and what we aspire to be. And the question is this:

This budget believes in austerity. It leads to prosperity; no evidence for that. This budget believes that tax cuts for the wealthy will create jobs; no evidence for that.

In our budget, we believe something very simple:

We're all better off when we're all better off, and that requires a budget that reflects what has always made America great: investment in a middle class that's strong and that's enduring. Our hope in passing any budget has to be that the middle class will be strengthened and that parents will have some confidence that their kids will be better off than they were.

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